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Anyway... I've been thinking for while now that I should offer a contest to spruce up my site a litle bit, and I finally got the perfect idea!

How about a contest where you go to a page with just a simple (clean looking and professional) contest form. The form tells you that you can sign up with an email address to win cash?! It says, "Just enter your email address here for your chance to win $100!" No other information is asked for.

Who wouldn't enter their email address?! (Don't answer.) Doesn't everyone like cash? Once I have the email address, I could send them an email every week saying there's a new contest, and don't forget to enter... PLUS!! (and here's the good part).. For each friend's email address that you send in to the contest you get one extra entry! Then, I email the friend and tell them about the contest. And to make it even better... if the friend signs up and wins..you win the prize, too! Even MORE incentive to send friend's addresses, eh?

I think it meets all the requirements for a successfull website. (One that gets lots of visitors)

Repeat visitors - People would bookmark and visit weekly (or daily if it get's enought traffic and I can get the cash)Self-referring - The more friends you sign up the better your chances of winning! People will advertise the contest for me!Interesting - Heck..who doesn't like free money!?

AND THEN I WOKE UP!!! I immediately went to the computer and looked around to see if anyone had the same idea already... &lt;CRAP!!!&gt; www.winvite.com They have the *exact* same idea that I was thinking about...!!! &lt;/CRAP!!!&gt;

So my question to you all (or "y'all" if you pack a gun) is do you think there's enough room on the net for more of this crap...er..stuff? I think that there's enough demand for this kind of thing that I could get some pretty decent traffic (ad revenue?). What do you think? It's a bit more of an idea than I was thinking for the gimmeabuck site, so I registered "taketheprize.com".

Well most people don't really like money so I doubt you'll get many people interested. Money is just too hard to carry these days, hence the transfer to silver and gold conch shells as a worldwide currency.

Ok, serious now . I think there is certainly more room for places to give out money. I'd sign up personally.

Considering that I never win ANYTHING from state lotteries to online contests to french fries from a rather large hamburger joint, I had a thought - from one 2am thinker to another!

What if you offered to the 'not a winner' (hate to think of myself as a loser) some little freebee with every contest that you have?? It wouldn't have to be much, most would be happy with at least something, and your 'not a winner' prize could increase as your affiates and therefore advertisments increase...

I sure haven't seen many sites offer 'not a winner' much of anything except for 'try again next time'...it sure would keep me trying!

I think it sounds like a good idea, myself. There might be others out there who have similar thoughts, but if you promote yours enough, it will be the standard cash-giving website in everyone's mind.

But you want to make sure that you let people know (several times!) that their email addresses aren't going on a spam list. I figure that some would be really leary of just typing in their email address to win a contest.

I would never sell an email list to spam people... (how would I go about doing that, anyway? grin. Not that I ever would, of course. heh,heh)

I'd certainly post a privacy policy pretty prominently all over the site.. for sure!

Would you send in your friend's emails? (ie: refer a friend) I think the ticket to this whole thing, is that people have to be excited enough to refer other people... kind of like a self-referring system. I can only do so much marketing with $0 budget..

Does anyone with some experience dealing with advertisers think they would be attracted to this kind of thing? The site probably wouldn't have a very targeted demographic, so it might not attract a very good rate... what do you think?

1. $100 ain't enough. Just check out http://www.bananalotto.co.uk/ - they give out £1,000,000 every day to anybody who draws the correct 7 numbers, £100,000 to anybody who draws 6 correct numbers, and £50 to anybody who draws 5 correct numbers.

2. If anybody is going to take notice you'll need some really brilliant advertising plan. Offline advertising seems to work well for contest sites, e.g. TV and radio. I see and hear a lot of that now.

Good heavens! Ouch. How in the world can they give away that much money every day? OK, so the odds are like 1:500000000000000, but really?!

Maybe my slogan should be "The contest where you actually have a real chance to win!"

Heck, I could make it the gimmick... Limit the number of entries per contest (have a new contest start automatically when say 6000 people enter). So if you're the 6000th person to enter, the contest closes and a new one starts. That way, people would actually have a chance to win. Heck, the prize might be small, but they'd be better then the winvite.com and bananalotto.co.uk odds.

Do you think that's too complicated or are people smart enough to figure it out? ie: it's easier to advertise (and get people to visit) a $1,000,000 contest than a $100 one, even if the odds of the $100 one are *much* greater.

I think that's an excellent idea. I would definitely sign up to that sort of thing. People will understand it O.K. as long as you make it clear on your web site. Just explain to your visitors how your method is better.

It seems to me that the way to get the best results from a contest site is to develop some new system that nobody has ever thought of before. Add some little twist that will get your visitors interested. It's the same sort of idea that TV producers use when they make game shows: each game show is different from the rest, so that people will be motivated to watch.

I would definitely sign up if such a competition was put online. But, I'm not sure about a 'not a winner' prize - that would cost too much to give something to everyone.
It would get you more visitors than not having one...but I think you should try your initial idea out, and if the take-up is good then carry on...if the take-up is not good then try to think of something to improve it slightly. Maybe become an affiliate of something like XDrive, and you can offer your 'not a winners' a free X rive!! If you're lucky they will not know that it is already free!!

OK, I think I've got most of the logic worked out for the site. It's a bit confusing, because I wanted it to automatically start a new contest when a preset number of entries is reached... and then each person gets an extra entry if the person they referred enters.. and then I've got to check if they've already entered the current contest, which is different then the old contests... arg.

Any other thoughts on the idea?

Here's what I've got so far:

The contest ends when the number of entries reaches 10,000. Then, a new contest starts automatically. So the odds of winning will always be at least 1:10,000! (Think that's low enough?)

You can increase your odds by referring friends! When your friends sign up you get a FREE extra entry for EACH friend.. AND if a friend wins, so do you!

The person who refers the most friends who enter wins a prize, too!

EVERYONE gets something for entering. I'm thinking I might partner with some company or something... not sure yet. Maybe I'll just give everyone who enters $.01 But I guess that would be pretty tough to track. grin.

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<A HREF="http://www.gimmeabuck.com
Simply" TARGET=_blank>www.gimmeabuck.com
Simply</A> the best way to spend your money.

Are you ready to give away 99 bucks every contest just for the losers? Are you saying this contest would be all the site was and you would make money off advertisers? I think it is a good idea, but you have to remember that if it doesn't go, then you will lose a lot of money.

I'll give you advertising and more people to your site, IF you give me about 9,000 $5 coupons. Of course the coupons can only be used one per person.

So here's the scenario:

I lose the contest. I'm bummed out. Then I read deeper into the "You lost" e-mail and see I get a free $5 coupon. I not only think that I did get something out of entering, and that I'll enter again, but also I'm happy 'cause I got a $5 coupon at a computer store (an example). I go and buy a $25 thing but it only costs me $5. So the store made money, got recognition, I'm happy, the contest made people happy, and the contest is thought of as worthwile.

Sometimes it takes awhile before I actually get around to acting on an idea... I'm usually around 2-3 months behind on my various ventures, meaning 2-3 months pass before I have time to act on them. I've got a large drawer full of great ideas that I'll eventually get to. And most of them are "2:00am revelations!"

If you're interested in ideas etc and how to implement them on the internet then have a look at "Ideavirus". ( http://www.ideavirus.com )

I downloaded it yesterday and have read 140 pages (of 197, I think) so far. It's a very good read. Well written and good content.

Most free ebooks are not worth the paper they're not written on (if you get my drift) but this is a super one.

As for ideas maybe someone could start a thread for them. As with probably all of you, I've got tons of ideas but unfortuately am not able to apply them myself. That's actually my motto! "Ideas, not application"